HTC has finally launched its latest One M8 flagship in the Indian market at a price of Rs 49,900. It will be available from May 7 onwards.
The One M8 sports a slightly larger 5-inch display with a Full HD resolution, bringing the pixel count to 440ppi. The smartphone comes powered by the Snapdragon 801 SoC, just like the S5 and the Z2. The phone will continue to have dual-front speakers, but gets a two camera setup that HTC calls ‘Duo Camera’, something called ‘Motion Launch’, Extreme power saving mode and the brand new Sense 6. The 16GB onboard storage can be expanded up to 128GB via microSD card slot.
The new HTC One M8 gets rid of any polycarbonate or plastic for the sides as the chassis is almost completely metal. The phone also debuts their latest version of Sense which features an enhanced BlinkFeed experience. They’ve been opened up to developers so Foursquare and Fitbit updates can be pushed through BlinkFeed now.
Battery life was one of the pain points of the M7 or the old HTC One. The M8 is said to have 40 percent better battery life. Whats more, other than the standard power saver mode, ‘Extreme power saver’ mode will shut down all communications except calls, text and emails.
Like LG and Samsung, HTC has added a bunch of gestures to the One M8. You can now double tap the phone to wake it, bring a ringing phone to your ear to answer it, etc. This isn’t exactly ground breaking stuff but it’s nice that HTC has included all these features.
Coming to the camera, HTC is sticking to their Ultrapixel shooter. Nearly all reviews were critical of HTC’s choice of retaining the 4-megapixel or HTC Ultrapixel camera, which was panned last year for bad colour depth and terrible performance indoors. Unlike the previous version however, the M8 will feature a whole bunch of manual settings for you to tinker around with.
The second camera around the back will be used to capture depth information. Rather than doing this at the software level like Nokia, which basically takes a bunch of stills at different focus points for you to manipulate later, the M8 will do this at the hardware level. Zoe mode also makes a comeback.
Find out how the HTC One M8 stacks up against Sony Xperia Z2 and Samsung Galaxy S5.
